We Will Bring Showers of Blessing (Short Story)

Believe it or not, this is a true story. My sister and I used our creative minds, to help the farmers in a small community where our Grandma lived.

When Tawas school year came to an end, summer vacation was always a welcomed time. My older sister Lyna and I use to cross the days off on a calendar, the very last week. One of our favorite summer past-times, was to spend time with our Grandma on her old country farm. Lyna was five years older than me, so she claimed to have a lot more farming experience under her belt. Wide-eyed and eager to learn something new, I would tag my sister around to find out how to run a dairy farm.

One time while visiting Grandma, we overheard her conversation with one of her acquaintances. Apparently, this summer the farmers were worried about their yearly crops, because of the lack of rain. Our ears were wide open and with deep concern, our minds started cooking on overtime what we could do to solve this problem. Finally, the lights inside our brains clicked on, almost simultaneously. Of course! How silly, why hadn’t we thought of this sooner? We rushed out to Grandma’s old machine shed, drug out some shabby, gray building material stacked up in a corner, a couple hammers and a hand saw, a tin can of second hand nails, a couple mason jars, and a ball of cord string. Together, we spent the best part of a morning masterminding two precision, quite ingenious inventions, better known as ‘rain-making machines.’

After completing our projects, we stood back, gazing at the fine job that we had done. Proudly, we presented Grandma with our machines and gave her a detailed demonstration, so she could see how they performed their task to produce rain. Grandma didn’t want to hurt our feelings, so she listened intently as we pushed buttons, then twisted lengths of cord string around the tops of mason jars, half filled with water. She smiled and thanked us for being so thoughtful in our attempt to bring them summer rain. We then continued to put our inventions to work, to save the local farmers failing crops.

Grandma’s jaw almost dropped to her chest, when dark cumulus clouds moved in and hovered overhead that afternoon! Before the day was over, welcomed showers were pouring out of the heavens, in torrents. My sister and I looked at each other, neither one of us acted a bit surprised. ‘See Grandma, we told you that we were gonna bring you some rain!’ And so, we brought her community some showers of blessing.